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<div><font face="Times" size="+2" color="#000000">Response to Wall
Street Journal editorial<br>
From The Endangered Language Fund
Newsletter, Volume 6, number 1, April 2002.<br>
by D. H. Whalen<br>
President, The Endangered Language Fund<br>
John L. Miller (Wall Street Journal, March 8,
2002, p. W13) would like to convince us that it's a good thing that
half the languages on the planet will disappear within a generation.
Protecting language diversity, in his opinion, is as "dubious" as,
say, affirmative action in college admissions or preserving endangered
species. Miller implicitly admits that language endangerment is
a fundamental questions, but the issues are poorly served in his
piece.<br>
He first confuses language change with
language death. Yes, it is true that all languages change and
that over the course of a thousand years or so, it is difficult if not
impossible to understand the original. But life is change.
Does Miller feel less alive because he is no longer the baby he once
was? Or, to adopt a closer analogy, does he feel that Western
civilization has died because our way of life is almost unrecognizable
compared to the Middle Ages? Presumably not; it is clear that
only dead things remain unchanged. So the fact that languages
change is irrelevant to the question of whether they should die or
not.<br>
Miller's assumption that modern culture is
good for everyone is comforting to those of us who live in that
culture, but it is far from true for the "primitive" people he
would like to save. Most indigenous peoples lose a large
percentage of their population upon contact with the modern world
through disease. Then, they are immediately "poor," having
had no reason to generate the wealth that matters in the modern
economy. Would they rather starve while looking at a picture of
a Big Mac, or continue living on the "fistful of beetle larvae"
that sustained their ancestors for generations? This is without
considering whether one diet or the other is actually healthier.
At the same time, Miller conveniently ignores the fact that indigenous
people today are mostly in marginal ecosystems, precisely because the
good ones have already been acquired by the modern economy (through
one means or another).<br>
Miller seems as unconcerned about the
disappearance of ecosystems as he is of the disappearance of
languages. Perhaps it will only be when he takes his last puff
of oxygen from the last tank on earth that he might be convinced that
diversity is a good thing. We have reached the stage, as a
thinking species, at which we can recognize long-term trends, but
these trends unfold at a time scale that is difficult for us to react
to. What will the consequences of language and species
loss be? We won't know for sure for decades or centuries, but
we know that there is no going back once we lose them.<br>
It was a great surprise to see Miller cite
the public education system as a reason for not allowing bilingualism,
since he probably would say that that same system fails monolingual
speakers as well. He thinks that bilingual education leaves its
students "fluent in neither" language, but would he feel the same
looking at just the English speakers' efforts? Bilingualism is
the norm in most of the world, and most people find the level of
competence in each language that they require. Further, the only
reason that non-native speakers of English would need the kind of
competence that Miller envisions would be if they were planning on
abandoning their native culture, i.e., "rudimentary" may be
plenty. However, it is clear that Miller hopes that they will
abandon their culture and globalize-after all, it works for him.
Why can't everyone else be like him?<br>
Americans like to think that they have
learned nothing from indigenous peoples, but let's look at one of
the traditional "American" treasures, democracy. The roots
of democracy are traced to the Golden Age of Greece (which we only
know about through the preservation efforts of Muslim clerics, but
that's another story). Why was it, then, that democracy was
not the norm in Europe, where the keepers of this tradition supposedly
lived? Why was it that they needed to come to America to
(re)discover democracy? It was not until they came here and saw
democracy in action in the Native communities that it began to dawn on
them that there was a better way to rule people. The rest, as
they say, is history. But without that diversity, we would not
have a USA now; we would still be vassals and serfs serving royal
masters. We have yet to discover the other treasures that
indigenous peoples encode in their languages, and if we do not
preserve those languages now, we will never know.</font></div>
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<div>Doug Whalen (whalen@haskins.yale.edu)<br>
Haskins Laboratories<br>
270 Crown St.<br>
New Haven, CT 06511<br>
203-865-6163, ext. 234<br>
FAX: 203-865-8963<br>
http://www.haskins.yale.edu/</div>
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